Title text: NPR encourages you to add comments to their stories using the page inspector in your browser's developer tools. Note: Your comments are visible only to you, and will be lost when you refresh the page.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect:Created by a AN OUTRAGED INTERNET USER. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic represents a news article that shows how easy it is to dominate the comment section of an article by creating shill comments to support any desired narrative of the community's opinion. The joke here is that this is precisely what has occurred for this article. The top five comments are assorted ways of affirming the article's text. However, the final commenter seems freaked out that a comment she wrote was in an article. It's possible that she is just an innocent victim of this who's legitimately scared, but it could also be that she is a shill for the opposite side that wasn't fast enough to post.

Transcript

[Single panel comic depicting a screenshot of an Internet article, showing the article title, lines of wavy characters representing the article text, and several comments from readers of the article...]

Backlash: Internet users are outraged over news stories using a handful of random comments to support arbitrary narratives!

[Head of a girl with short hair:]

I can't believe how easy it is to create an impression of peer consensus.

[Head of a guy:]

This dynamic is so easily manipulated and it freaks me out. xkcd.com/1019

[Full picture of a girl with hair bun:]

Everytime I share something and a friend responds "Haha, did you see the top comments..." it just reminds me how influential these things are in shaping the impressions of even relatively internet-savvy readers.

[Head of a guy who looks like Cueball on a black background:]

NPR got rid of comments in 2016 when they realized they all came from a handful of visitors posting hundreds of times a month.

[Full picture of two guys:]

Eventually social norms will adapt to this stuff, but it needs to hurry up.

[Head of a girl with ponytail:]

I have nine followers and created my account last month; how am I being quoted in this news article??

Discussion

It seems the news article in this comic is doing exactly what it says is causing outraged user comments - presenting a narrative that is based on a few random comments from outraged readers! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 17:21, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

...and none of the comments for the article appear to be from outraged users, contradicting the arbitrary narrative of the article that is based on what must be assumed are random comments! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 17:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure if these are "comments", so much as they are tweets being "quoted" by this article. That seems to better explain the last entry, which appears to be meant as a self-referencing quote. 108.162.241.4 18:00, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with this interpretation! I agree that many times articles display copies of tweets, but the article title specifically mentions random comments, not random tweets. I believe the comments are indeed from readers of the article, but that's just my impression. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Well... Can't tweets be comments as well? Comments do not need to be in the comment section. Even if I tell my coworker at the water dispenser about an article I read, and that I didn't like it, that is a comment on that article... --Lupo (talk) 05:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

A lot of XKCD comics reference or allude to current events/reality. Are there a lot of articles that focus on the first few reader comments? Aside from NPR's move, is there something else Randall's referencing?

I think everyone is missing the real point of this comic. What it's really satirizing is the way the news media elevates a handful of negative comments about something to mean "The Internet is outraged".
Barmar (talk) 00:25, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

There's a distinct lack of attention to the fact at least one of these comments/tweets are entirely stripped of context. The second to last one has absolutely no mention of the topic at hand, just a general statement. This delivers a particular punch coupled with the article's hand-picked comments to support a narrative. 162.158.93.213 07:32, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

While it's not current news, several years ago there was the Starbucks Red-Cup Controversy, stirred up by the media claiming everyone was outraged. In fact, only a small number of people were actually outraged about the cups, while most people were outraged by the controversy itself! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 11:55, 6 June 2019 (UTC)